Villiers looking out of touch

Posted By: April 18, 2016

Irish News editorial. Monday, April 18, 2016THE latest serious conflict of interest facing Theresa Villiers illustrates sharply why her belief that she would be able to maintain a neutral role as Stormont secretary of state while forcibly advocating the campaign to remove the UK from the EU against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland was hopelessly flawed from the start.

Ms Villiers found herself under enormous pressure last month when, contrary to her repeated claims, a Whitehall Cabinet Office report found that, in the event of a British exit or Brexit, the reintroduction of customs patrols on the Irish border, inevitably involving a massive security presence, would swiftly follow.

The secretary of state insisted in an interview with The Irish News that ‘common sense’ arrangements could be established on what would suddenly become the only land frontier between the UK and an EU State but was less than specific on the details.

She was then challenged by the News Letter on suggestions that passport controls would then effectively switch to ports like Stranraer for the first time ever, which she also denied in equally vague terms by saying, ‘we would find ways to manage these risks’.

The spotlight on Ms Villiers became much more direct earlier this month when arguably the most senior pro-Brexit figure, former chancellor Nigel Lawson, said categorically that Irish border posts would have to follow a British withdrawal and was supported in his contention by a serving Conservative Euro sceptic junior minister Dominic Raab,

Ms Villiers responded through The Financial Times saying that Lord Lawson and Mr Raab has somehow made a mistake in their assessments and what she referred to only as ‘existing laws’ would deal with any problems over migrants who tried to enter Britain via Ireland.

She responded to a trenchant intervention by the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern on Sky News yesterday by maintaining that a ‘free-flowing’ border would still be kept in place but she sounds like an increasingly isolated voice who would prefer an early move well away from Hillsborough Castle.

A compelling article in The Irish News last week by business consultant Frank Costello set out plainly the huge concerns which exist in key US political and economic circles about the impact of a Brexit.

Four of the five largest parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly are committed to staying in the EU, while the fifth, the DUP, has an unconvincing Brexit policy which allows individual members to make up their own minds.

The four main Dáil groups are all strongly pro-EU and the leading Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes said firmly at the weekend that the various pronouncements from Ms Villiers would have to be accompanied by a written agreement with the British government that Irish border controls would not accompany any British withdrawal.

While many observers in both Stormont and Leinster House would strongly favour such an initiative, it is extremely difficult to see how it could be delivered while the Brexit enthusiast Ms Villiers remains in office.

Her position is obviously sincerely held but none of her predecessors as Secretary of State over the past four decades have ever left themselves open to the blunt accusation that they were demonstrably out of touch with prevailing public opinion across almost all of the nationalist and unionist traditions in Ireland.

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